Jukka Jalonen Riihimäki is relaxed, down-to-earth and straightforward

Riksuun rakastuneet is a story series in which people from Riihimäki share their thoughts about their hometown.

"A down-to-earth, honest group. Humble in their own way, not hovering too much. They value themselves, but also others."

This is how Jukka Jalonen, who is known as the head coach of the national ice hockey team of the Lions, sums up the essence of Riksulism. The definition also seems to fit Jalosee himself quite well, a barefoot man from Riihmäkä, whose career was shaped on the sand fields of Riksu and the ice of the central sports field. And on a certain clay pond that is no longer there - now highway 54 passes by it.

When it started to get so cold in the fall that the small pond froze, Jukka and his friends hurried there. The three-kilometer journey from Otsola to the pond was made by bicycle, and the larger one by moped. The drizzle to play puck was so hard that even natural ice was fine.

At Riihimäki in the 1970s, series matches were also played on outdoor ice, and Jalonen still remembers the local names he was a fan of as a kid.

"A player named Laiho's nickname was Hyykä. It had a hard shot and used to throw itself in front of the puck,” he recalls.

Riksu's junnu could not even dream that as an adult he would coach league teams in Finland and abroad and bring the Lions home from the World Cup with gold medals around his neck.

"It's better that I didn't know. It's wiser to just live in the moment and enjoy it," he says.

Viita and Puonti as friends

In addition to ice hockey, free time was also filled with fudis and athletics. Of course, in childhood, we also scrounged in the woods at the corners of Otsola, built huts.

"It was a good, tight circle of friends, many of whom I still keep in touch with," says Jalonen.

Friends were, for example, Jari Viita, who is now known as the head of the handball club Cocks, and Kalevi Puonti, who became a drug police officer and a writer when he grew up.

Riksu's sports facilities later also became familiar to Jalonen's sons Jesper and Jim, when the family had decided to settle permanently in Riihimäki in 2001 after years abroad.

"Because of the children going to school, it seemed like a good solution. There were relatives and friends nearby, the same language and culture," says Jalonen.

Soon the coach found that he was also playing the role of a parent in the ice rink, when both boys got excited about the puck.

“I can be in peace”

Jalonen says that Riihimäki's location has been ideal for coaching work.

"From here I can quickly go in every direction to follow the games."

He also describes that in terms of his own work, it makes it easier that Riihimäki is not a particularly fanatical hockey town, but has profiled more as a baseball and handball town.

"Hockey is watched here casually. Of course, I'm known through my work and I like to talk about hockey, but I still get to be in peace," he says.

As a counterbalance to the stressful work, free time in Riksun Uhkola is often spent relaxing at home.

"We mostly think about whether to go to Prisma or Cittar with my wife. I can't even go to the beach to sunbathe like I used to," jokes Jalonen.

Riihimäki ice rink is named after Jukka Jalonen as JJ arena. He also has a Nimikkopuisto, and there are pictures of ice skates immortalized on a poster and a sound piece from which the sounds of the rink can be heard.

"It feels good," says Jalonen.

"I feel that I am valued. It seems to be known here that I have always been proud of being from Riihmäki."

 

Jukka Jalonen

• Head coach of the Finnish national ice hockey team.
• Born in 1962 in Riihimäki.
• Lives in Riihimäki.
• Studied for a master's degree in exercise science at the University of Jyväskylä.
• Has coached many teams in the Finnish Mestis and SM league, in the Italian and English premier leagues and in the KHL.
• Coached the Lions to the world championship three times: the youth team in 2016 and the adult Lions in 2011 and 2019.
• The family includes wife Sari and sons Jesper and Jimi, who also work in hockey.

Kaisa Hako